IAB Australia has today announced the appointment of Yahoo7's Justin Orchard (left) as co-chair of the standards and guidelines council, while Nathan Powell (right) from Nine Entertainment will take up a co-chair role on the video council.

Orchard is head of sales operations at Yahoo7 and Nathan Powell is director of sales - digital product at Nine Entertainment.

The appointments mark another phase of the Refresh program being
undertaken by IAB Australia, with both Councils currently undertaking a
review of their purpose and plans for the second half of 2017.

Says
Vijay Solanki, CEO, IAB Australia: "As the IAB builds more momentum and
the Refresh continues, I'm excited to have both Justin and Nathan step
up and take the lead for both standards and guidelines and video
respectively. Video continues to grow and digital standards have never
been more important for our industry, from reviewing the new ad unit
portfolio through to addressing adblocking."

Solanki thanked the
exiting Council Chairs, John Moffat from Fairfax and Suzie Cardwell of
MCN, for their exceptional service to the IAB and industry. Moffat had
chaired the IAB Australia standards and guidelines council for almost
five years and Cardwell has been involved in the IAB Australia Video
Council since its launch in 2014.

The IAB Australia standards
and guidelines council are currently working on adblocking guidelines
and will be hosting a digital ad operations conference next month to
support the Australian AdOps community. Next quarter it will be working
on the proposed overhaul of the IAB standard ad unit portfolio.